Ash Moore, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Oklahoma College of Law)

It is the 40^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I’m in law school so you may think you’re about to be bombarded with legalese and a disconnected opinion. But I have a different and important perspective – a personal one.

When I was a teenager, I was raped. Gang raped. And as cliche and trite as it has become, I was ashamed and felt like it was my fault. So, despite my better judgment, the first thing I did was take a hot shower. I washed away all evidence of the crime even though I knew exactly what I was doing. After the shower, I went in to denial. I tried to pretend like it didn’t happen. I didn’t get tested for STDs and I didn’t do anything about a potential pregnancy.

Then, in a couple of months when I started throwing up and feeling like I was getting fatter, reality set in with a vengeance and brought sheer terror with it. I didn’t know anything about pregnancy except how it came about and I knew it was a possibility.

At that point, I was more determined not to tell anyone than I was before. What if they didn’t believe me? Or what if they did and they were furious I did everything I wasn’t supposed to do? Either way, what was I going to do if I was really pregnant? I knew abortion was an option, but I didn’t want to kill something growing inside me.

I could give a baby up for adoption, but my life would be permanently changed and maybe ruined in the meantime. I didn’t know if that option was selfish, but I didn’t make a mistake, this was forced on me. Couldn’t I put myself first for a second?

I could keep the baby. But I truly believed that wouldn’t be the best thing for the baby. I wouldn’t be able to give it the kind of life it deserved. I would struggle, not have money, and be a young parent (with or without help) which is hard on the people I knew who had young parents.

Whether you think it was right or wrong, abortion was a huge part of the decision process. And the longer I thought about it, the more it seemed like the most rational and right choice. I’m deeply religious and that caused a huge problem and huge internal struggle. Would God understand? Would He approve? Would I be condemned? I knew no matter what decision I made, I would never be the same again.

Most people agree that abortion should be available for rape victims. So I wasn’t in the same position as the women struggling with restricted rights today. But what was the same was the excruciating decision process and fear. What the pregnancy test result was and what I ultimately decided are irrelevant.

What is relevant was that I had a tough decision to make and no matter what I decided, more options made the tortuous experience a little easier. It made me feel like others had struggled and came to the same decision I did; no matter what I chose, I knew I would never blame or fault anyone for making a different one in that impossible situation.

No matter how someone gets to the point where they need to make a decision regarding a pregnancy (through rape, mistake, health or money problems, or other things I may not be able to think about right now), I believe all the choices I had should be available to every other woman (and more if we can find them).

I think access to all the choices should be easy because the decision making process is hard enough. I think most women probably walk in to a doctor’s office or adoption agency after as much thought, pain, and tears as I went through. Any obstacles to make these personal decisions harder are cruel and unusual punishment.

If abortion is the ultimate decision, I believe no doctor or spectator has a better idea of the heartbeat about to stop than the woman who has to live with the decision. As you can see, abortion isn’t my story. But it’s an important part of it. And it’s an important part of society. No matter what you would choose, imagine, as I did, the process without one or more of the choices.  Then look me in the eye and tell me you want to do that to another living, breathing, caring, concerned person who is only trying to think about the best decision she can make for herself and her family. It should never be harder than it was for me. Or you. If you know the feeling.

Elisabeth Smith, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Washington School of Law)

Over Christmas my cousins and I were watching television and we just kept flipping channels until we got to TLC and saw some women dressed up in 1950s garb turn from black and white to full color. Heard of Wives with Beehives? The show is basically a Real Housewives variant, but all the women live a “vintage lifestyle”. Other people have talked about the show, but I want to highlight something besides its antiquated notions of gender roles.

All of the women go on and on about the magic of the 1950s.  Dollie calls the 50s “a very romantic period. It’s romantic to have a husband [who] you love, and beautiful children [who] you take care of and a beautiful home you take pride in.”  Here’s where I take issue with this show. Traditional gender roles aren’t my cup of tea, but a show about 4 white women mooning over the romance of the 50s without any recognition that the decade wasn’t all moonbeams and starbursts for everyone is gross.

Let’s start in reverse order. The home.  After World War II, “FHA underwriters warned that the presence of even one or two non-white families could undermine real estate values in the new suburbs. These government guidelines were widely adopted by private industry.” [Click here @ 1:30:55]  So if you were a white GI you could take advance of the GI Bill and get a home in the new suburbs. A GI of color had far fewer options. As Dalton Conley, a sociologist, a points out “basically, the whites moving to the suburbs were being subsidized in the accumulation of wealth, while blacks were being divested.” If a beautiful home is one component of the magical 50s, it was out of reach for many people.

Okay, two: beautiful children with whom you spend your time. In the 1950s, African American women worked outside the home in large numbers so they if they spent their day with children, those children probably weren’t their own.   Another statement made by one the “Wives with Beehives” underscores this reality. When the women discuss whether any of them have dishwashers, one replies “I don’t need a dishwasher, I have Maria.”  Wow. So living a vintage lifestyle also includes vintage racism!

Yikes, people, yikes. I get that these women have chosen to make the 50s their thing, but seriously, what we say on tv does have effects.

Rosie Wang, Columbia

Culture is to softness as is policy to hardness. Cultural change is to a wave as legal change is to a solid object. No, this is not the return of the ye olde standardized testing analogies but some of the concepts used today at a storytelling workshop that explained the role of stories in the RJ movement. Basically, stories are engines of change for public sentiment, and subsequently political reality. Awesome, but admittedly, also a bit abstract to me. What made it click on a new level for me was Sujatha Jesudason of CoreAlign’s truly powerful closing talk to the LI. She said that to survive, the reproductive justice movement had to break its bad habits. This included no longer telling stories of victimhood, and instead writing a heroic narrative, in which the heroes include all people as people who have agency in their reproductive lives. She said that the RJ movement must craft something akin to Rosa Parks’ story, something both familiar in its everyday aspect, and yet with lasting potential for symbolism and parable. Looking back on the stories that I have helped tell this summer via this blog, I see myself falling into this very trap of bad habits. Writing about Bei Bei Shuai, a woman being charged with murder and feticide for attempting suicide while pregnant and mentally ill, I wrote that “her story demonstrates how even women who have conformed to the mainstream can become victimized.” And yet Ms. Shuai is a hero to me for facing with optimism and strength a legal system designed treat her body as first and foremost life support vessel for her fetus. But this is story that is yet unresolved, where victory is uncertain –how can it be a success story and not something reactionary? I concluded that the narrative of someone acted upon and then acting in response is not victimizing or teleological. Instead, it is empowering and can do important work in touching upon people’s common sense of humanity. I think it also serves as a rallying cry to people devoted to RJ to support Ms. Shaui in determining the course of her own heroic narrative. Because while anti-choice has it easy in that they can frame decades of reproductive oppression and the status quo as “tradition” for the dominant story they tell, we get to write our own rallying cry from scratch, with the very work we do every day.

JoAnna Smith, Emory

The last session of the weekend called “Where Do We Go From Here? The Future of Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice,” challenged all of us to think about the history of the reproductive justice community, to analyze our successes and, more importantly, the bad habits we have formed, and to think critically about how to move the conversation forward.

One of the speakers was Ms. Sujatha Jesudason, the Director of CoreAlign Initiative.  CoreAlign did a study to analyze what was working and what needed to be improved in the RJ community. They found that the movement was extremely well-funded, but that we lack cohesive messaging, inspiring leaders and goals, and actions that are proactive rather than reactive. Instead of looking at the issues of rights, justice, and health as separate issues to be addressed by different experts, we needed to find ways to make connections, share resources, and to focus on RJ heroes rather than victims.

I thought back to an exercise we did the first day where we were asked to design a program around a reproductive justice topic. Many of us who were well-versed on abortion-bans, defunding of Planned Parenthood, and vaginal ultrasounds struggled with the assignment because we had never thought about some of the other RJ issues out there. Even those who had thought about them, had never before considered out to communicate them to a broader audience and in a way that included the voices of those RJ impacts the most.

I also thought about the session I attended on chapter strategic planning. I attended but was skeptical that a campus club like mine would benefit much from a strategic plan; it seemed too formal for what we were. But after hearing Ms. Jesudason talk about how the RJ movement is doomed to stagnation and repetition of bad habits without close self-examination and a plan for success, I am a convert.

I pledge (and I challenge you to pledge) to examine how my organization is doing RJ work. Do we sacrifice a broader message in the name of an easy event? Could we reach a more diverse group of people by spending more time coalition building on campus and in the community? Can we acknowledge the successes of those who came before us while doing something different, better, more successful?

I am so excited to get back to campus this fall to get started on our strategic plan. I wish you good luck on yours!

JoAnna Smith, Emory University

During the first day at the Leadership Institute, we discussed how the reproductive justice model differs from other frameworks for reproductive rights or social justice.

It made me think back to when I was working as a labor doula before law school.  A labor doula is a trained and experienced professional who provides continuous physical, emotional and informational support to a woman before, during and just after birth.  A doula learns that she is there to help the woman have a safe and satisfying childbirth as the woman defines it. It is not the role of the doula to discourage the laboring woman from her choices, nor to project their own values and goals onto her.

As a doula, I was required to listen more than I talked.  I learned to encourage women to ask questions and get information rather than doing it for her.  I learned that I couldn’t possibly understand all the circumstance of another woman’s life that drive her to make the decisions she does, but that I should do everything in my power to hear her and help her achieve those choices.  I learned to work behind the scenes, providing valuable skills and resources when needed, but never taking the spotlight away from those who really mattered: the woman, her family, and supporters.  Outside of the birthing room, I advocated for changes in a complex system of institutions, laws, and circumstances that make it difficult for women to have the birth they knew was best for them.

What I heard during the RJ 101 session made me think hard about the role of an RJ lawyer.  In law school we learn how to be the interpreter of the law and the one who gives advice.  We are taught to stand up in front and speak confidently.  We are taught to be, or at least act like, the experts our education prepares us to be.

But the reproductive justice framework asks us to focus on the intersections of race, class, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender expression, immigration status, and ability and how they impact access, agency, and autonomy in shaping one’s reproductive destiny.   It shifts our role from achieving a right or winning a case for someone to one that requires us to listen and to act only once we attempt to understand those we serve.  It asks us to work with communities as allies, strategists, and advisors to overcome the complex systems, laws, and circumstances that make it difficult for people to have the reproductive destiny they know is best for them.

We must be doulas in the reproductive justice movement.

I am incredibly honored to be at the L I with so many soon-to-be lawyers who will continue to doula this movement, and those it affects, forward with compassion, grace, and integrity.

Catrina Otonoga, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

Each spring, my elementary school, like elementary schools across the country, had field day. A day where the 1^st through 5^th graders with innate talent to run fast, treat tug-o-war like life or death, and leap through obstacle courses like mini-Olympians, shine. I wanted so badly to be one of those kids, to run fast, “like Greg”, arguably the fastest kid in my class, who went on to excel in high-school sports and field letters from football recruiters across the country. Instead, I had short, spindly legs, thick glasses, and barely the muscle definition to allow me to walk properly. My grandfather wouldn’t let me carry an umbrella on a blustery day for fear I’d blow away with the wind.

“Not everyone is good at everything, not everyone can have everything,” my mother told me. Sometimes hard word doesn’t pay off, sometimes you just aren’t meant to be a fast runner, or an astronaut, or the President. But sometimes it does, and those are the things I was told to focus on. Instead of struggling to be good at everything, trying to be spectacularly awesome at one thing that makes me tick.

Now, the dialogue has changed. Society, feminism, and sometimes even well meaning family and friends are pulling women in opposing directions. And, as I approach the beginning of my 3L year, where applying for jobs and starting my life outside academia is knocking on my door, I feel it more than ever. The push to have an amazing career, get married, buy a house and also to travel, see the world, not compromise. The pressure to Have. It. All. Even in a world where we are increasingly being told that having it all, isn’t going to happen. Not with these institutions, not among this systemic culture of disadvantaging women and annihilating our path to meaningful choice. Not without some serious change. And even when we see women who have finally reached that pinnacle, they distance themselves from the history of struggle and sacrifice that they built their education, careers, and ability to achieve balance on.

Increasingly, I’m unsure of what I want for myself; how many kids I want to have, if I want to own a home, if I want to live in Bangladesh and help provide women with micro financing, if I want to be a mother, a conventional lawyer, a U.S. citizen, at all.

What I do know, is that I want to live a passionate life. To work for a cause I’m passionate about, and to surround myself with people who not only work passionately, but live their lives with laughter and tears and friendship at their core. It’s an experience I have gotten a taste of in my time at LSRJ. I have seen passionate women who are growing and raising their families, expanding their careers, pushing through law school, struggling with what it means to be a woman, a friend, a partner and an advocate, and living lives of growth and intention. In a political climate where our identities as women are under scrutiny, my internship at LSRJ has been shelter from the storm—a shelter full of balloons, Friday Night Lights, dialogue, and affirmation. And, as I begin to wrap up my time here it is a way of thinking and living that I’m sure will carry me through my final year of law school, down whatever path I find myself on, and through the obstacles that I’m sure will be there.

So thanks, Mama LSRJ for giving me shelter.